Josh Roseman - The Clockwork Russian and Other Stories

It takes everything I have left to make it to the boat. Al’s thrown out a life preserver; I make sure Barry’s holding it before grabbing the ladder and dragging myself up onto the deck.

Al helps me up onto a bench, stringy muscular arms keeping me from crashing across the deck and into the cabin wall. I get myself bungeed and undo my fins, shoving them into an empty tank holder before unbuckling the vest and lurching to my feet. Together we pull Barry up onto the deck; he coughs and sputters and spits out his regulator, but he’s able to let us help him to a bench. We get him secured and he yanks his mask down.

“It’s happening again! Just like last time!”

“What happened last time?” Al says, his voice sharp through the wind.

“Seven years ago,” Barry says, a little stronger, “we were here! Her dad… we were on that wreck… we found… and her dad…”

“Shut up, Barry!” I yell. “He’s not dead!”

“Goddammit, Eleanora!” He’s hanging onto bungees on either side and I’m clutching the bridge ladder, but Al somehow is still on his feet, eyes narrowed. “Phil’s dead! Phil’s dead and this is insane! What the hell are you trying to prove?”

“He’s not dead!” It’s a scream to the sky, to the storm, to the rain and wind and lightning and thunder. They rip the words away but I just keep screaming it. “He’s not dead! He’s not dead!”

I was almost sixteen when they told me Dad was dead. Steve got us away from the storm, and the Coast Guard came, but I only remembered it in flashes. Mom met me at the dock, eyes red and puffy, and I threw myself into her arms, crying along with her. “They’ll find him,” I forced out between sobs. “They’ll find him.”

Mark drove us home. Mom and I huddled on the couch, watching the phone, waiting.

The call never came.

Mom and I kept checking with the Coast Guard, but they kept saying they hadn’t found him. Mark stopped returning my calls; he’d had enough of me begging him to dive that wreck with me. But I never gave up, not even when a Coast Guard lieutenant came to our house, sat down in our living room, and told Mom and Jason and me that they’d officially declared my father dead.

Mom lost it, but I didn’t react.

My father wasn’t dead. Until I had proof, he wasn’t dead.

Rain pours down. I loop my arm through a bungee and start changing my vest to my second tank.

“What the hell are you doing?” Al glares at me, holding the cabin doorway.

“I’m going back down there!” I get the vest off the first tank, then scoot down to the second. It nearly crashes to the deck when I unhook it, but I yank the vest onto it and bungee it back in place.

“No way!” Barry yells. “No way am I going down there again!” He points to Al. “Get us out of here!”

“No!” It’s a scream, enough to make Al stop, halfway up the ladder. “I paid you,” I snarl. “I paid you, and this is my boat for the day. We’re not leaving!”

“She’s crazy!” The boat rocks, slams Barry against his empty tank, and he clutches his shoulder. It’s a mistake; the boat skews back in the other direction and pitches him to the deck. “Elle, this is nuts!”

“He’s not dead!” I screw my regulator onto the tank. “One hour! Then we’re going again!”

Barry shakes his head, face white with pain, barely holding onto the railing in the middle of the deck. “I can’t do it again, Elle,” he says. I barely hear him over the storm. “I can’t do it.”

“Then I’ll go alone.”

I was seventeen when I stole Grandpa’s boat and took it out to the wreck where I’d last seen my father. The radio squawked at me the whole way: Grandpa yelling at me to come back, to bring the boat back so we could talk about this.

I stayed there for hours, snorkeling along the smooth surface of the water, staring into the depths, trying to make out the wreck that I knew was down there. Dad’s notes, his log book, everything in his computer said there was something down there. Barry Katz wouldn’t talk about it no matter how hard I pushed him.

I would’ve gone down to the wreck, but there’d been no way for me to sneak my dive stuff onto the boat. I tried, though, swimming as far down as I could, until my lungs burned and my eyes were blurry with tears and fatigue.

There was no way I could get there. Not without air. Not without equipment.

Grandpa’s voice on the radio kept yelling at me as I leaned over the side, the sun low on the horizon. “I love you, Dad,” I whispered. “I’m not giving up.”

That night I came up with a plan.

Barry is greenish-pale after twenty minutes in the wildly-rocking boat. Al’s on the upper deck, strapped in, waiting. I manage to get to my cooler, stowed in the cabin, and down a bottle of water and a bag of mini-muffins.

Instantly I realize my mistake. Fortunately there’s Dramamine in the cooler, as well as ginger ale. I dry-swallow the pills and bring the soda out to the deck, looping my arm through the ladder to stay upright. Barry’s still on the bench, good arm threaded through a bungee. He hasn’t moved since Al and I put him back up there. The sound of the storm is just background noise now, and though Barry keeps getting bumped against the empty tank holders, his voice is calm through the cacophony.

“I hate this.”

I drink more of my soda, then lunge to where he’s sitting and press the can into his hand.

He shakes his head. “I’m gonna lose it,” he says.

“If you barf, you barf.”

“Not that.” He looks down.

I nod. “Want some privacy?”

He doesn’t answer, just turns away. I get back to the ladder, then move to the side of the boat, facing the bow, letting Barry pee himself in relative peace. At least the rain — still coming down in sheets — will wash it away.

My watch eventually beeps. Only ten minutes until I can go back. The adrenaline suddenly gives out; I lean over the side and throw up. The current carries it away and waves wash the side of the boat, as if it never happened.

I stare at the sky, breathing slow and deep. “I’m not leaving,” I say quietly, ignoring the salt spray that makes my eyes burn and itch. “I’m going back, and I’m going to find my father.

I stay starboard until my watch beeps again, then work my way to the rear deck and struggle into my gear.

“I’m not going,” Barry says. “I can’t go back again.”

I shrug as best I can with the vest tightened across my shoulders. “Then I’m going alone.” I stare across the middle of the deck at Barry. “If…” I swallow hard. “If something happens…”

Barry sees that I can’t finish. “You’re crazy, Elle,” he says. “Please don’t do this.”

I reach back and undo the bungee. The boat rocks; I plant my fins and slide to the end of the bench. “I have to, Barry. I have to know.”

I look up to the bridge, see Al leaning over the railing. “Don’t do it, girl,” he calls.

I shake my head, then pull my regulator into my mouth. Normally I’d take a giant stride into the water, but in this weather, I just hold my mask and regulator to my face, twist around, and fall backward with a splash that I’m sure neither Al nor Barry can hear over the storm.

Ten feet down the line, the silence is louder than the noise on the surface. I block it out and, hand over hand, pull myself toward the ocean floor.

I was eighteen when I gave up on my plans to become a marine biologist — like Dad. For two years I was a lackluster community college student, but I didn’t care. I worked in a dive shop and as a lifeguard, saving money. I’d need the best equipment — and I’d have to buy it myself — and I’d also need to charter a boat.